The musings of a freeborn Englishman who is totally disenchanted with the present dictatorial attitude that poses as democracy

Saturday, 16 January 2010

Another Cameron 'Promise' To Disappear?

The Daily Express reports on Conservative policy in respect of the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights. In so doing, yet again can we see the duplicity of Cameron and his policies.

"A couple of years back, during the furore over Britain’s inability to deport Learco Chindamo, the murderer of head teacher Philip Lawrence, Cameron appeared to have real fire in his belly. He described Labour’s Human Rights Act as “rotten at the core”. “It has to go,” he added, “it’s a glaring example of what is going wrong in our country.” Amen to that. But later it transpired that Cameron’s proposed alternative, a British Bill of Rights, would change very little as he was not proposing to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights (the body that this week declared police stop-and-search tactics illegal)."

All EU states are members of the Council of Europe and have signed the Convention on Human Rights; the ECJ refers to the case-law of the Court of Human Rights and treats the Convention on Human Rights as though it was part of the EU's legal system; EU institutions are bound under article 6 of the EU treaty of Nice to respect human rights under the Convention and since the Treaty of Lisbon has taken effect on 1 December 2009, the EU is expected to sign the Convention.

Cameron is not proposing to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the ECHR for the simple reason he does not now have the power so to do, even if he so wished. Welcome to the EU, a body founded on principles - one of which is freedom - that does not allow nation states the freedom to decide their own future.